King of hunger
In general, the first documented and well-described mass famine occurred in the early 17th century, and led to the Troubles, a series of wars and coups that almost destroyed Russia. Since then, famine has returned regularly, but it was far from the scale of the Troubles, and the authorities were not strong and interested ... until it came to riots. You can also understand the authorities, when the fields were cultivated with a wooden plow, two- and three-field and full dependence on weather conditions, regular hunger was inevitable. It was not only with us, it was everywhere, and there was still a need to learn in a different way.
A traditional agrarian-based society is generally not rushed: a small number of townspeople in a sea of peasants, a rigid attachment to the agricultural calendar and traditions that regulate every aspect of life, do not provide room for drastic changes. But everything changes in the 19th century, the age of iron and steam. Capitalism is being built in the world, the population is flowing into the cities, like mushrooms after the rain, factories and factories grow ... It is clear that agricultural technologies are developing and harvests are growing. They are growing in Europe, where they made a step towards the industry earlier, but here ...
Problem number one
And our traditional society is preserved, moreover, it is strengthening. Why did it happen? The point is in the heirs of Peter the Great, or rather in their support, which became the nobility. And the well-being of the nobility depended precisely on the traditional society, or rather on the sale of bread grown by the peasants. And for a larger harvest, the needs grew, the world changed and life became more complicated, a good and high-status life, in addition, became more expensive, either agricultural technologies or more peasants are needed. It was difficult with the first in Russia, little technology was produced, in which the wine, oddly enough, it sounds, is precisely the nobility. Capitalism and industry require working hands, and our working hands belonged to someone. Of course, there were less than 50% pure serfs, but the rest were also not free, they were either state, or cabinet, or someone else's people.
As a result, a classic vicious circle has developed in Russia - to solve the problem of society and the state, it is necessary to build industry, but it does not work out to build it, because with the general population of people there are no people. It cannot be said that the authorities did not understand this, the Romanovs were not fools, but there was but. The times when Peter beat Menshikov with a stick and hanged high-ranking thieves are over, in the era of palace coups everything was the other way around, the nobility overthrew and put on the throne convenient monarchs. One list of those killed by the nobles is shocking - John Antonovich (deposed in infancy, all life in prison, killed by guards), Peter the Third (the Orlov brothers), Paul the First (the closest noble entourage) ... It is clear that Catherine was, of course, Great and Enlightened , but she did not touch serfdom, moreover, it strengthened, it is fraught, you know, having an army and a guard of nobles, to undermine the source of their well-being. And Alexander the First, after taking part in the murder of his father, kept all his liberal dreams to himself.
No, they did, Catherine created the Free Economic Society and agitated the landlords for modern forms of management, Alexander the First adopted the law "On Free Farmers", which allowed the peasants to be freed voluntarily, but all this did not work. Why should the nobility change anything if it is possible not to change it? Still, Nikolai Pavlovich did most of all - not being able to free the peasants, he began to shake the traditional village. The trade of serfs is limited, the quitrent takes on a massive character, the ruined nobles are gradually deprived of their lands and souls. But all this went slowly, very slowly, and meanwhile hunger was already knocking at the gate, along with cholera and war:
1833 year. Reasons: cholera, crop failure. How the authorities fought: in no way. Increasing the odds mortality in starving provinces by 2.4.
1839 year. Reasons: cholera, crop failure. How the authorities fought: in no way. Increasing the odds mortality in starving provinces by 2.4.
1844 year. Reasons: drought, crop failure. How the authorities fought: in no way. Coefficient increase death rate in starving provinces by 2.1
We were late for the war with industry, and the Crimean War was lost, it was necessary to change something and ... And, as one politician put it, “We wanted the best, but it turned out as always».
Great reform?
Everyone knows that Alexander the Second is the Liberator and benefactor, and why the peasants massively rebelled against liberation, they even write textbooks sparingly, and if they do, they are extremely ideologized. In fact, everything is simple and sad - the peasants were freed so as not to offend the nobles. The result was a sheer disgrace in the form of depriving the peasants of part of the land and mortgages for a period of 49 years (two generations) to buy themselves out. All this would be good if there were jobs in the cities where the extra peasants instantly formed could find a piece of bread, and the nobles would invest in these very agricultural technologies, having received huge easy money. But the money was spent in Europe, the landlords were rapidly going bankrupt, and the peasants were never released to the end, because there was nothing to violate the disgrace.
As a result, the industry in Russia appeared, however, foreign, often with imported skilled labor, and unskilled labor was taken in the form of seasonal workers, that is, without taking extra people to the city. In the village itself, it became terrifying - the preservation of the community and the introduction of bondage called "redemption payments" led to an explosive growth of the population, the community divided the land according to the number of eaters. And since there was no money for cars, breeding seeds and fertilizers in the village, it began:
Hunger became something permanent, infant mortality was off the charts, and the language was enriched with new terms, like “walking in pieces”. Only 1891 took away 0,5 million people, which, however, did not interfere with the sale of bread, the Russian Empire did not have any other export product, and the money was for the consumption of the ruling class, that technology was needed. In fact, the Romanovs themselves created a huge bomb under the state in the form of tens of millions of beggars living on the brink of starvation and rapidly lumpenizing peasants, whose number tripled in the 19th century alone.
The solution of the problem
The problem of excessive demographic pressure was not understood for a long time, moreover, they were proud of the growth of the population, predicting an increase of up to 500 million in a hundred years. The fact that populations are exploding in impoverished and disadvantaged countries has never occurred to anyone. 1905 and the first revolution awakened everyone. The redemption payments were canceled, the Stolypin reforms began to liquidate communities and resettle peasants to Siberia and the Far East. The first did not help much, the village was already ruined, the second hit the peasantry, creating a powerful stratification among the peasants, when one became rich, a hundred fell into poverty, and the resettlement failed.
And it could not fail to fail, the new lands are new natural and climatic conditions to which the peasants were unaccustomed and unadapted. Some, of course, survived and prospered, but many returned, having lost everything altogether. As a result, it exploded. It rushed so that everything previous in the world stories seemed like a trifle. We are used to the fact that Civil is white and red, but there was a third party, the most numerous, and these are the peasants who were against both the white and the red. This force was disorganized, illiterate, but it was she who gave rise to the greatest horrors and sacrifices, simply out of hatred for everything outside the peasant world. As a result, the famine of 1921, caused by both seven years of continuous war and the confiscation of grain by the warring parties.
We must pay tribute to the Bolsheviks - the NEP period is a period of attempts to resolve the issue in a peaceful evolutionary way, which completely failed. He could not fail to fail, in a poor, backward country, where eight out of ten residents did not have so much money, not so much land to build a paradise for everyone. The recipe was clear - rapid urbanization, agricultural mechanization and that's it. The main thing is to remove the superfluous from the village, providing them with work in industry, and put the rest on a tractor, giving them an agronomist and a livestock technician.
On paper it was smooth, like in Alexander II and Stolypin's, but, as usual, I had to walk through the ravines. The peasants resisted breaking the traditional way of life, the authorities did not fully think through the plans, and the local performers were illiterate. As a result, famine again, the worst famine in the history of Russia, from 2 to 7 million died in the USSR. Yes, and in the cities it was hard, after the construction of factories they did not have time to build housing, hospitals, schools, the shake-up of the village led to rationing and a shortage of food ... But be that as it may, they coped. And the famine of 1932-1933. was the last famine in a series of disasters caused by the transition from a traditional society to an industrial society. The price was paid terrible, and not only with us.
England, Ireland, India went through such a breakdown, there were problems with mass riots in France, Austria ... It's just that serfdom was canceled there easier and more adequately, and they started earlier. And we were late, for which we paid a terrible price. And it is stupid to look for creepy facts in order to make political opponents guilty. Civil, with such a bomb under the foundation of statehood, was inevitable at the first serious shake-up. And whoever won it, the problem of the peasants would have to be solved one way or another. It's like with a disease - in neglected cases you can only cut, and the peasant question has been launched in our country for a good century. It would be possible to speculate unless the Crimean War began, and Nikolai Pavlovich's serfdom was finally expanded, but history has no subjunctive mood.
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